Faking It (13 page)

My shoulders slump under the weight of her admonishment. Once again, it comes back to appearances. Why do I care so damned much about how things appear? Why do I have a pathological need to portray myself as more moral, more proper, than I actually am? I don’t know the answer to that question, but won’t be able to look beyond the surface until I stop projecting a false image of myself. I won’t be able to see things as they really are until I get real.

“Now”—Fanny pulls away and holds out her hand—“give me your phone so I can upload the ring photo we took in the spa pool yesterday.”

“Seriously, Fanny? Why bother?”

“Why bother?” Fanny snorts. “We bother for the bored, idle masses dependent on our scintillating daily ring updates.”

It’s my turn to snort. “Masses?”

Fanny looks up, eyes wide.

“
Oui
, masses! Vivian, I know you’ve been obsessively checking your e-mails and texts.”

I am about to object to the word obsessively when Fanny brushes my protest away.

“Haven’t you checked your Instagram and Twitter accounts?”

I shrug. I have checked my accounts, but only to see if Nathan sent me a message.

“You have a thousand new followers on Twitter and twelve hundred on Instagram. In only three days!”

“You’re kidding?”

Fanny shakes her head.

“Whatinthehell? Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because most people know what it’s like to feel the powerlessness of heartbreak. Maybe they enjoy watching someone gain back her power.”

“Power? I am without a job, man, and home. How am I gaining power?”

“Last week, Nathan left you at the altar. This week, you are a single woman honeymooning in the south of France. If that’s not reclaiming your power, I don’t know what is. You could have stayed home and wallowed in tubs of Ben and Jerry’s, but instead you’re sipping wine and cycling to the French Riviera.”

A smile lifts the corners of my mouth. “You make it sound pretty spectacular and badass.”

“It is spectacularly badass!”

I look at myself in the mirror, clad from head to toe in sleek pink and black riding gear. The Provençal sun has painted strawberry blond streaks throughout my red mane and left my cheeks tan-ish. The dark circles that ringed my eyes in the days following the loss of Nathan have faded. I don’t look like a despondent, near-suicide, jilted bride.

“It is badass, isn’t it?”

“You’re badass,” Fanny says, snapping her fingers and tilting her head. “Go girl!”

* * * *

Now that I have proper riding gear, I feel pretty badass. No borrowed shoes. No obscene skort. No more looking like a homeless cyclist stalking a tour group.

I said I loved riding in Nathan’s sweats and my Raw T-shirt, but deep down it really bothered me not to look the part. Keeping it real is great and all, but clothes are like armor. A knight wouldn’t show up at a joust without his chainmail, would he? Like chainmail, we wear clothes to project strength, ability and status. Who wants to meet a group of strangers dressed like a charity project?

After eating a quick breakfast, we head to the circular drive in front of the resort. The group has already assembled for the day’s ride. Jean-Luc is engaged in a conversation with the Rosenthals. He looks at me over the top of Mrs. Rosenthal’s gray head and smiles.

I am replacing my water bottle when he walks up. His gaze moves from my face, down my pink-clad form in an irritating, leisurely fashion.

He smirks.

“What?”

“Nice gear.”

His smug grin is really annoying me. The salesman at Freewheel Cycle Shop promised me Castelli and Gore were two of the best brands in cycling clothing, so I fail to see what is so funny.

“What’s wrong with my gear?”

“Nothing, it’s just very…”

I cross my arms and wait for Luc to finish.

“Pink.”

“So? What’s wrong with pink?”

“Not a thing,” Luc laughs.

“I like the color pink.”

“Okay.” Luc holds up his hands as he backs away.

I wrote an article once about the color pink. I interviewed Dr. Windfree Bennet, a psychiatrist and New Age Colour Therapist. Dr. Bennet theorized that women who prefer the color pink over other colors are sexually repressed and therefore hypersexual. He said pink does not appear on the color spectrum. It is actually made up of several other colors, including red, which arouses base sexual instincts, and orange, which stimulates internal sexual organs.

Who knew I was stimulating my internal sexual organs just by looking at my shirt? All this time I thought I liked the color pink because of some desire to recapture my childhood, when in reality I am just some perv secretly stimulating my internal sexual organs.

I sneak a peek at Luc bent over his bike and wonder if his sexual organs were stimulated when he looked at my pink ensemble. I sorta hope they were.

Luc didn’t look at me with such smoldering desire when I was prancing around in my slaughtered sweats and old Raw T-shirt.

Okay, maybe keeping it real is too lofty of a goal. Maybe a little artifice is necessary. Faking it isn’t that bad, is it?

Keep Riding, Pilgrim

Super cool pink cycling gear might stimulate organs, but you know what it doesn’t do? It doesn’t keep you from getting fatigued or crazy bad leg cramps. Super cool pink cycling gear doesn’t keep angry motorists from hurling curses at you as they drive by, and it doesn’t keep the rain from falling.

We are six miles from Châteaudouble, the end of our exhausting forty mile ride, when my body literally fails. My legs are quivering, my back is crumpled, and I’m slumped over my handlebars.

“I. Can’t. Go. On.” I am wheezing like an asthmatic donkey. “Must. Stop.”

“Don’t stop, Vivian,” Fanny implores. “Look at the sky. The rain is coming. We only have a few more miles. You can do it.”

“I. Can’t.” I slow to a stop and grab my chest.“Go on. I just need to rest for a little bit.”

Never-Ever-Ever-Quit Fanny is going to be pissed, but I don’t care. I am dying. It’s been twenty miles of uphill, downhill, uphill slogs.

“Go on!” I snap. “I’ll catch up when I can breathe.”

Fanny narrows her gaze.“Go. I’ll be fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely. Please. Go.”

I watch Fanny ride away with a sense of relief. My primal need to survive beat my earlier fears of being “dropped” into submission. Who cares about riding with the cool crowd if it means wheezing and aching? I would rather sit beneath a scrubby pine tree and watch the cool crowd pass me by than die trying to keep up.

I don’t blame Fanny for being annoyed. I’ve been lagging behind all day. We missed the group at the halfway point and had to eat lunch by ourselves. She was patient for the first thirty miles, but I could feel her irritation growing the last four miles or so.

A small abandoned stone farmhouse sits in a dirt field off the road and I head toward it, wheezing and aching with each step. A bolt of lightning cracks across the leaden sky. I hurry my pace. Cold pewter-colored raindrops plop onto the hard-packed Provençal dirt around my feet and slide down my exposed limbs. By the time I lean my bike beneath an overhang, I am soaked and shivering, and rain is dripping from the brim of my helmet.

I step beneath a pergola attached to the front of the house and wrap my arms around myself. I should feel happy. I am taking a much-needed rest, protected from a brutal downpour on the porch of a charming ancient farmhouse somewhere deep in the heart of the southern France. I am alone.

I listen to the rain drops.

Alone. Alone. Alone.

Wasn’t it Marilyn Monroe who said, “I restore myself when I am alone?” Or maybe she said, “It is better to be happy alone than unhappy with someone.”

Anyway. I am not feeling restored or happy. I am simply feeling alone and miserable. A lonely, miserable loser who can’t even ride a bike thirty miles without wheezing and crying.

Now that I’ve dipped my toe in the whirlpool of misery and self-loathing, why not plunge all the way in? I imagine myself a gray-haired spinster, dressed in a pink housecoat, crumbling bread crumbs on her windowsill as she mumbles to pigeons. I am alone, without husband, family, lover, retracing the errors of my youth, the tragically misguided decisions that delivered me to a life of solitude. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, I will look back on my past and realize one fateful wrong turn altered my course toward a path of wretchedness.
If only I had finished that bike ride, maybe then I would have fallen in love, gotten married, been happy.

The sound of someone approaching the farmhouse draws me from my self-pitying daydream. Luc is riding over the field, head down, eyes focused on me. I watch him pedal with determination, jaw clenched, muscles bulging, and I begin to cry.

My weeping starts out like a scene in a Victorian melodrama. Tears stream down my cheeks while I sniffle softly. I am the lilting flower, bravely struggling to contain my anguish.

By the time Luc gets off his bike and joins me on the porch my emotional schizophrenia is on full display. I am acting like a lunatic, half laughing and half crying. I am relieved to see Luc, but also embarrassed at my pathetic need for companionship.

Luc unsnaps his helmet, yanks his sunglasses off his face, and stares at my tear streaked face.

“What is it, Vivia? What’s wrong?”

I can only hiccup.

Luc pulls me into his arms, and I shiver at the heat of his body. The simple gift of his compassion unleashes a fresh torrent of tears.

This hot Frenchman must think I am a freaking lunatic.

Luc pulls back and looks into my face. “Are you hurt?”

I shake my head.

“Then what is it?”

I lift my chin, looking up at his handsome face. Worry lines etch across his tanned forehead. His concern should comfort me, but has the opposite effect.

“I’m a…loser!”

“What?” He pulls me to him, wrapping his arms around my waist. His heart is thudding in my ear. “You are not a loser.”

“I am!” Humiliated, I press my face against his warm chest and close my eyes. “I am the only one struggling to finish the rides. I come in last each day.”

“Some of the riders on this tour are extremely experienced cyclists.”

“Give me a break, Luc. Half of the riders fall into the geriatric or toddler demographic. Old people and kids! I’m getting my ass waxed by old people and kids!”

To Luc’s credit, he doesn’t laugh or even chuckle at my self-pitying declaration. He just rubs my back and waits for me to stop crying.

When my sniffles finally subside, Luc murmurs something in French and releases his hold on me. Is it my imagination, or did the temperature suddenly drop twenty degrees without Luc’s body to keep me warm?

Luc walks over to his bike, pulls something silver out of his pack, and walks back to me. The silver thing is a thin rolled up blanket. He unrolls the blanket and wraps it around my shoulders, holding onto the ends and staring into my eyes.

“You are not a loser, Vivia.” His low, accented voice is doing funny things to my stomach. “You are remarkable and brave.”

“Remarkable? Brave? Me?”

His gaze is so intense, too intense. I have to look away.

“
Oui
. You.”

What is it about this Frenchman and his ability to steal my breath? I inhale and my heartbeat quickens when I smell the scent of the cologne on his heated skin. Fanny would probably laugh if I told her Luc’s cologne smells like sex and sunshine, passion and power, a sultry aroma that could be worn only by confident men like Greek gods or Roman gladiators. Does he know what he is doing to me? That I have trouble breathing whenever he is near?

I look up, pretending to study the sky. “How much longer do you think this rain will last?”

Luc shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

“I hope it ends soon. We still have several miles to ride.”

“We aren’t riding, Vivia.”

“What? Why not?”

“It’s nearly dark.”

“So?”

“These mountain roads are treacherous at night. It would be too dangerous to ride. The van should be here any minute now.”

“The van?” I try to step back, but Luc is still holding the ends of the blanket. “I can’t show up at the hotel in the van.”

“Why not?”

“What will the others think?”

“Who cares about the others?”

“I do!”

Honestly, I don’t care what the others think about me. I care what
I
will think about me if I don’t finish the ride. I care about thwarting a destiny of spinsterhood and pigeon feeding. But how can I explain such convoluted thinking to Luc? What would he think of me if I exposed my vulnerabilities to him?

“Why do you care so much about what strangers think of you?”

“Everyone wants to make a good impression.” I have to look away again before Luc sees the pain in my eyes. “I’ve already earned the reputation as being the slowest rider on the tour.”

He drops an end of the blanket and tilts my chin up, forcing me to look into his eyes.

“It's not how fast you move through life, Vivia, or how perfectly you execute the moves, but that you do it with grace and humor.”

His words are like an iron band around my chest, squeezing my lungs until it hurts to breathe.

“Grace? Me?”

Luc flashes a dimpled smile. “You possess a certain grace.”

I press my hand to his tanned forehead. “You must have heat stroke.”

Luc looks up at the gray sky. “It’s cold and raining.”

“Okay then, rain stroke.”

He removes my hand from his forehead, but continues to hold it. “You attack the hills with humor, Vivia. Humor is sexy.”

Before I can respond with some self-deprecating, pithy comment, Luc grabs the ends of the blanket and pulls me against him. I look into his eyes and my heart stops beating. I am hovering in that exquisite place between agony and ecstasy. I imagine it’s a lot like purgatory—that excruciating pause between heaven and hell, waiting to find out your fate. And then he leans down, presses his lips to mine, and I’m falling, crashing through the clouds, spiraling toward—heaven, hell? I don’t know which. Frankly, I don’t care. I close my eyes and lean into him.